Video: PlayStation EyeToy - Innovation and Beyond for PS3

Sony Computer Entertainment America's Senior Researcher Richard Marks takes a look back at the EyeToy today, starting with the PlayStation 2 all the way to the PlayStation Move through video footage!

To quote: It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since the PlayStation 2 launched and 11 years since I first started here at Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Over the last decade, I've had the privilege of working on some of PlayStation's latest and greatest - the EyeToy being one of my first big projects when I joined the company in 1999.

The EyeToy USB camera was the first of its kind to translate your body movements into game controls, map your face onto in-game characters and more. It was created to allow you to physically interact with games, such as Antigrav, EyeToy Play and Kinetic, using your body.

The unencumbered feeling of no wires and feeling free (instead of connected to your television) was very important, as was the simplicity of the controls. Everyone, even non-gamers, felt like they could just jump in and play, which was great.

We learned a lot from our experience creating EyeToy, and it has definitely played a significant role in the development of PlayStation Move. We've pulled together a quick look back at the technology that started it all in the video below.

EyeToy helped us understand that while people definitely enjoy physical interaction and movement, they also want precise control and a simple, fast, reliable way to trigger actions. We also found that some experiences just feel more natural when holding a tool, or a "prop."

Seven years later, we've introduced PlayStation Move, which we think is the ideal combination of both spatial and action/button input. We here at PlayStation are always looking for ways to enhance the gamers' experience and we're looking forward to the new experiences PlayStation Move will enable over the next 10 years.

He hits on a lot of points that seem pretty obvious to most people. I think this is pretty opportunistic to put a video such as this out around the same time as a major competitor offering basically version 2.0 of this idea.

Still, it makes sense that the camera can track something that is universally the same (such as the move controller). I wonder if they can do regular eye toy type controlling as well and offer ports of all the kinnect games on PS3?